


in the mountain of the crouching beast

by patrocluus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Time Travel, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 12:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrocluus/pseuds/patrocluus
Summary: Dave catches his eye later, when they’re sitting next to each other in the bumpy truck, men jostling into each other on all sides; the corner of his mouth quirks up a little, just enough to make Klaus’ heart jump in his chest. He doesn’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that: like they have a secret to share, and that secret is the most important thing in the world, even if that world seems to be ending around them.Or: It's 1968, and deep in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, Klaus meets a man who feels like home.





	in the mountain of the crouching beast

One second, he's sitting in the bus. There’s blood still caked onto his cheeks, and a cut across his forehead is bleeding sluggishly down the side of his face. He's picking at the clutch on the briefcase in his arms, fidgeting with the locks, trying to work them open --

And then, all of a sudden, it's darker around him. He feels his ass connect with the ground, and there's sound all around him. That's the first thing that registers: the chirping of insects, the heavy breathing of men all around him, and then there’s a man leaning over from his left to peer at him, concern in his eyes. The guy has a dog tag dangling from his neck, glinting in the light, and just the sight of that dog tag brings up immediate associations -- associations from movies Klaus watched years and years ago, war movies he’d never been a fan of but Luther always loved -- that are so strange and alien that it takes him a moment to register that something's deeply, fundamentally wrong.

And that's all he has time to register, before a deafening wave of sound washes over him, a sound like the world's ending. Instantly, everything around him is swept into action, men he hadn't even had the time to notice jumping up from their beds, instantly on the move. Klaus whips his head around in panic; the massive, earth-shattering crash is over, but it's replaced by a new sound, one of purpose and something else. And before he can say a word, before he can look over at the briefcase he's still clutching in his arms, there's a man barking orders at him, loud and in his face. There's no time to think, no time to do anything; someone’s shouting that it’s “-- time to get dressed, war’s not gonna wait for you to look pretty, boy!” and “Chaz, get this man operational!” and “Get this man a gun!”

His ears are still ringing, his head is swimming, and his vision swims before him. He's barely aware of what's happening, but somehow, he ends up on a truck, in a pair of camouflage pants and a helmet on his head that looks and feels like it was picked straight out of a history museum. As does, for that matter, the truck he's in, and the uniform. He can feel himself shaking even as the truck jostles him around; but nobody's looking at him, nobody's even seemed to notice that his presence there is out of place. 

That is, nobody but one person. The man who'd first noticed him when he popped into existence in this world that's not quite right -- the man who had been sleeping next to him and had looked up in confusion, eyebrows drawn as though he might've witnessed what was going on but believed it might have just been a dream -- that same man is sitting next to him, and looks over with a sympathetic expression.

Klaus barely notices it until the man leans over and nudges him sympathetically. "You just get in country?"

He doesn’t respond immediately, just looks over, at a loss for words. But the guy doesn't seem discouraged: he just keeps looking at Klaus, expectant.

"Oh, uh." Klaus swallows heavily. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess."

It's not much of a response, but apparently, it's enough; the man smiles, sympathetic, and nods. "Shit's crazy, I know. You'll adjust."

Klaus nods. It's all he can manage.

There's another beat, and then the guy holds out his hand. "I'm Dave."

That extended hand is like a lifeline, something binding him to this world. Klaus grasps it and takes a deep breath. "Klaus."

They hold on for a moment; a look passes between them, a look of understanding, as though Dave can see the soul-shattering, all-encompassing terror filling Klaus to his core right now. Then he lets go of Klaus' hand, and the moment is over as quickly as it started.

Overhead, the sound of more grenades exploding rings out through the jungle surrounding them, and Klaus takes a deep, shuddering breath.

\--

Later, when they make it back to camp, Klaus doesn't have it in him to do much more than collapse on a random cot; he's not sure if it belongs to someone, and doesn't take the time to find out. His lungs feel like they might collapse in on themselves, his legs gave way the moment he made it into the tent, and he's shaky from what seem to be the first signs of withdrawal symptoms.

He's in Vietnam. That much is clear. It's the sixties, men around him are smoking cigarettes at a speed that implies they definitely don’t know about the whole cancer thing yet, and he's in the fucking Vietnam War. It's the kind of thing, he thinks distantly, that truly could only happen to the truly unlucky, or to the Hargreeves siblings. He never thought that time travel would be a genuine thing he could cross off his bucket list, but whenever he'd imagined it (and of course he had; who wouldn't have considered it, at least for a moment, with a sibling like Five?) he'd pictured something idyllic: some medieval village in rural France, where he'd hang around a little, chat up with the locals, then escape before he could catch any weird diseases and die gruesomely of warts and poisoned water, or whatever happened to sad French peasants around that time. 

But instead, here he is, in another gruesome war where the men lying around him snore or stare straight up at the ceiling with blank eyes; Vietnam rages on around him on all sides, and the briefcase --

He sits bolt upright, glances around himself, and it's not there. It's not there, he hadn't even had the time to think about hiding it or keeping track of where it was, it could be anywhere in this fucking country --

He can feel himself start to hyperventilate, his breaths coming in shallow and ragged; the world is retreating to a pinpoint, or maybe it's him retreating, and he's stuck here, in the middle of the goddamn Vietnam War, he could be stuck here forever --

"Hey! Hey, buddy, hey, look at me," and there are hands on his face, warm and rough hands clasped around his cheeks. He blinks once, twice, and the sight of the man he met earlier on the truck -- Dave -- swims into view. Dave, who looks concerned, who's saying things, softly, in a gentle but urgent voice that’s just insistent enough to push through Klaus’ rising panic.

"Hey, come on, breathe with me, buddy. Let's do it together. Breathe in." He takes a deep, theatrical breath, and Klaus tries to follow along, pushing against the pressure of the heaving of his own chest. Dave's hands on either side of his face are grounding, a small thread back to reality, this ridiculous fucking reality, fuck, _fuck_ \--

He blinks hard and takes another ragged breath, slower this time, as Dave nods, looking at him with eyes so sad and compassionate that Klaus’ breath almost catches in his throat again for a second. He breathes out, though. He breathes out, and then in again, and Dave's hands lower to grasp his, firm and warm.

“There you go,” Dave says, hands clutching Klaus’ with a strong, comforting grip. “See? You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Klaus nods, slowly.

“I think I found something of yours, by the way,” Dave continues, and lets go of Klaus’ hands; he wants to protest, but the man reaches behind him and pulls out a glossy black briefcase, and that’s enough for Klaus to forget about how good it felt for someone to just touch him comfortingly for once, even if it was just the holding of hands. He takes the briefcase from Dave gingerly, holding it carefully as though it could explode at any moment. Of course, for all he knows, it could; it’s not like he received a briefing on this thing’s exact functionality before zipping over to the past.

Oh well; no time to worry about that. “You, my friend,” he tells Dave sincerely, “are truly a Godsend.”

“Oh, well -- you’re welcome. It was no big deal, really.” Dave chuckles, but Klaus has already stopped listening as he fumbles with the clasps on the briefcase with shaking fingers. He’s getting the _fuck_ out of here; he’s just been a part of a single mission and he figures it was probably enough to traumatise him for the next couple months or so, and he really can’t wait to say hello to the year 2019 again.

“What’s in there, anyway?” Dave says from behind him, peering over his shoulder as he works at the clasps with a feverish intensity.

“You’ll see,” Klaus grins, as he readies himself for the wave of blue light to come over him again. The clasp pops, and the briefcase falls open onto his lap.

Nothing happens.

_Nothing happens_. 

The briefcase is empty, mocking him; this can’t be right. He slams it shut, pulls it open again; nothing, again. Something settles in the pit of his stomach, heavy, angry, and he feels a sense of dread that’s somehow more overpowering that anything he’s felt, more than the shock of first showing up in the middle of this camp, more than the panic of a moment ago when he thought he’d lost this stupid fucking briefcase. Apparently it’s not gonna do anything for him. He doesn’t know how to work this thing, and maybe it can’t be worked anymore; maybe he’s just stuck here now, in the fucking year 1968 in the middle of the fucking A Shau Valley in Vietnam. Because if he can’t figure out how to get that blue flash back, how to somehow trigger the briefcase again… 

He can sense Dave’s confusion at his reaction -- the devastation on his face must be quite telling -- but he can’t muster up the energy to turn around to look at what response this dramatic unveiling might have provoked. He can’t tear his eyes away from the emptiness of the briefcase; there are no contents, just an interior lined in grey cloth, staring back at him, mocking him.

“Er,” Dave starts, “are you alright? I swear I didn’t take anything out of it, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be empty, I just --”

“It’s fine,” he hears himself say distantly, “it’s -- it’ll be okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” and he’s nodding, as though his body is operating without his telling it to do so, “I’ll figure something out. I _will_.” 

“Alright,” Dave says slowly. There’s concern in his eyes, and he looks like he wants to say more, which Klaus really can’t take right now. He gets up abruptly, briefcase still clasped in his hands like he’s never gonna let go of it.

“I gotta go,” he hears himself say, rushed and a little shaky, “gonna go for a walk.”

“You okay, man?” Dave asks, but Klaus is already on his way out of the tent, pushing through the flap that works as a door and through to the outside, where he stands still for a moment, chest heaving as he collects himself. Dave doesn’t follow him.

There are men milling about all around him, but nobody seems to be paying attention to one skinny man with a shell shocked expression, clutching onto a briefcase that’s more polished than anything around them. He takes a couple of deep, steadying breaths, and then sets off towards the edge of the barracks, where there aren’t as many people around and he can, with a bit of luck, have a breakdown in peace.

He sinks to the ground behind one of the barracks, out of sight of the main clearing where soldiers are swarming around like ants, in a spot of relative privacy. The briefcase drops to the ground next to him and falls open without his having to do anything; nothing happens, just like nothing happened before, because apparently, he got stuck with a time travel device that only fucking works one-way. Which means that he’s stuck here, in what is as far as he’s concerned pretty much the worst possible place to be in the past, for the foreseeable future, if not forever, if he can’t figure something out.

_Fuck._

It’s too much to wrap his head around; his breathing is speeding up again, and now, with no one there to calm him down, he can feel the onset of a genuine panic attack. He tries to force it down; he needs to think, but thinking isn’t his strong suit, has never been; this is Allison’s forte, and it was Ben’s, back in the day. If Ben were around now, maybe he could somehow help, calm Klaus down or help him figure out a plan. But Ben is nowhere to be seen; in fact, for that matter, Klaus isn’t seeing any ghosts around him. That seems weird -- in the middle of a warzone, when he’s been clean for the past couple of days, spirits should be barraging him from every angle, but it’s almost eerily void of them. He’s not sure how or why, but somehow, his powers must be suppressed here. That seems like a more likely explanation, at least, than Vietnam in the sixties not having any casualties to haunt him.

He wishes that he could find someone, anyone, to confide in, someone who could explain to him what exactly is going on. But talking to people about time travel and the strange lack of ghosts haunting him is probably the easiest way to make it into the mental ward; he has to lay low, for now, and figure something out. His breathing is slowing again, evening out, and he closes his eyes tight, before opening them again, hopeful. Unsurprisingly, he’s still surrounded by dense jungle and dirt, and the voices of men are all around him. 

Okay. He’s gonna deal with this. He’ll figure out what to do, somehow, but for now, he’s stuck here, and he’s gonna have to take it step by step. One step at a time: first, he should find himself something to eat. His stomach is burning; the last time he ate anything was before he ran into the psycho torturers this bullshit all started with, he thinks. First food; then a plan.

\--

The food is, unsurprisingly, deeply shit. He wolfs it down anyway, keeping his head down and not talking to the men eating around him, who are loud and boisterous with each other, shouting across the table and past him.

Later, he makes it back to the barracks where he first materialised, and is lying back on the bed that’s been assigned to him, next to Dave’s; Klaus really doesn't want to know what happened to the person who inhabited this bed before him. He's hoping that he'll be out of here before his powers suddenly kick in and that particular ghost shows up; he's never had to deal with the spectre of a person whose sleeping spot he stole, and he's not particularly looking forward to that experience.

Dave is on his own bed next to Klaus’, scribbling away into a notebook that looks like it might fall apart any second; there are clippings sticking out from the sides, the corners of photos, and it seems like a diary of some kind to Klaus. He's engrossed in his writing, doesn't look up at all until Klaus clears his throat.

"Um." He coughs, tries again. "You, er. Thank you for today. Helping, you know, with my briefcase. And the, um."

Dave smiles. "Yeah, don't worry about it. Trust me, plenty of men here don't feel too hot on their first day. You'll get used to it."

"Great," Klaus mutters under his breath. He can hear cicadas chirping all around them; the moment you start to pay attention to the damn things, they're everywhere.

"Where you from, man?" Dave asks, putting down his notebook with a definitive air and turning to Klaus, eyebrows raised.

Klaus snorts. There's a beat, and he considers. "The future, actually. Fifty years from now, give or take."

There's a moment of silence; Klaus looks away, unsure. Maybe that was a stupid thing to say. Maybe he should be trying to keep a low profile here, get out as quickly as he can; but he couldn't help himself. It's a truth that's begging to spill over, and he has always loved his fair share of oversharing; ask any of his siblings. Mentally, he’s already running through his options, things to say to brush that ill-considered statement off jokingly without arousing suspicion. But then Dave smirks, and gives a slight tilt of his head, as though to say, _alright, sure, play it your way._

"Do we win?" he asks.

Klaus sighs, and looks up at him. Dave is grinning at him, amusement in his expression, but there's also a strange sort of vulnerability there, unexpected and confusing. Klaus can't bring himself to say anything but, "Of course we do."

"Of course we do," Dave repeats, with a sigh. He smiles, slowly. "Well, that's good to hear, Klaus from the future."

He doesn’t believe Klaus. Of course he doesn’t. On an intellectual level, Klaus _knows_ that he should be grateful that this guy is taking it as a joke, rather than taking him for a mental patient, as Klaus was at least half expecting. And yet, as he lies back onto the cot, hard as cardboard, and turns away from Dave with a sigh, he realises that part of him was hoping that maybe, just once, this would be the moment where someone would take him at his word and truly try to listen. Maybe that kind of thing, that understanding and love, is just not made for Klaus; God knows there wasn’t much of it back when his siblings still spoke to him. And yet despite everything, here he is: stuck on his own in the worst the past has to offer, with a briefcase that won’t work and a man who looked at him with the corner of his mouth quirked up slightly and warm eyes -- and there’s a feeling in his chest, in a tiny corner beside the terror and anger at the fact that he got fucked over again, as he always does… There’s a feeling, a small spark of something warmer there, too. 

The lights turn off suddenly. Dave shoots him one more look, a warmth behind it that Klaus can’t quite parse, before nodding once and lying back against his bed, turning away from him. Klaus’ eyes remain on his back for a moment.

“Night, Dave from the past,” he says quietly, and even though Klaus can’t see his face, he hears Dave chuckle.

\--

Somehow, he’s assigned a squadron, based on the barrack he wound up in; he’s not even sure what the process behind this is, but apparently it doesn’t matter much, because he’s dragged out of bed every morning at the ass-crack of dawn, a helmet is pressed into his hands, and then he’s out patrolling, a gun strapped to his hip that he hardly knows how to operate. Dave, the only name he has a face to put to so far, is right behind him, and when he stumbles once, foot catching in the vines that cover the ground wherever he looks, Dave is there to catch his arm and hold him upright. A look passes between them; Klaus doesn’t thank him, but he holds Dave’s gaze just long enough that he hopes it’ll mean the same thing anyway.

Before he knows it, days have passed, and those days turn into weeks, piling onto each other with an almost frightening speed. The days all pass the same way; the life of a soldier, it turns out, may be exhilarating and terrifying at times, but it’s not too varied or eventful. They patrol, they get caught in crossfire and get grenades chucked at them; before long, Klaus knows how to shoot a gun and, with luck on his side, actually hit his mark from fifty metres away. He’s not too well versed in the history of this war; he’s fairly certain that the US troops definitely weren’t always in the right. But somehow, when he’s caught up in the gunfight and bullets are flying past his ears, it’s hard to remember that the other side also consists of men like him. Maybe that’s just the uncomfortable truth of war: once you’re in it, it’s hard to see the other side of the story. Then again, Klaus has never claimed to be a morally upstanding citizen; he suspects that Ben might have yelled at him for that, had he been here, but Klaus is alone in this strange country, this strange time, and frankly, he has bigger things to worry about than whether the people trying to shoot him dead have wives and families, too.

The nights that he’s back in the camp, he tries to avoid the men around him. Their camaraderie is almost touching, but Klaus isn’t a part of them, just as he shouldn’t be a part of this war. He’s gonna stick to himself, as he’s always done, and figure out what to do. In the field, he might not be able to make it without relying on others, but here, in the relative safety of their barracks, he doesn’t need to be making friends and getting attached. 

But apparently, certain people have other plans.

"Come dance with us," Dave says, one evening as the sun is setting above the horizon. The whole campsite is cast in an orange glow, almost surreal in its strangeness. Klaus is sitting on his cot, the briefcase beside him, firmly locked. He doesn't look up from his dog tag -- _Hargreeves, Klaus_ \-- which he turns over and over in his hands.

"Maybe next time."

"Come dance with us," Dave says, again, and his outstretched hand suddenly appears in Klaus' line of sight. He looks up, surprised; Dave is standing before him, the orange glow of the setting sun casting a halo around his hair. He looks almost tender, his eyes soft, and his hand doesn't move from where it's reaching for Klaus.

"I'm tired." It's not a lie, but it's also so, so far from what Klaus would have said a week ago, should anyone have asked him to come out and party with them. Or, maybe fifty-one years ahead, he supposes; it's hard to wrap his head around.

"Come dance with us."

Dave's hand remains there, an invitation, and Klaus hasn't been able to get the briefcase open in six days, not for lack of trying. Home is so far away it feels intangible, untouchable. 

"Alright," he says, and it feels momentous somehow. He reaches up and grabs Dave’s outstretched hand. Dave smiles.

\--

He dances like there's no tomorrow, and maybe there won't be; for all he knows he could die here, stuck half a century in the past with no family to call, nobody to say goodbye to. He's already seen more death here than he's done in all his years so far; death is everywhere, pervading every nook and cranny of the terrain, and the ghosts are creeping up on him. He needs something to keep them at bay, and if going out dancing with a bunch of Vietnam soldiers is his way to do so, then sue him. There must be something to numb him here, in this bar where everyone wants to forget.

Although these people seem to be having a decent time with it, all things considered. A girl grabs his hand, spins him around to face her, all laughs and twirling skirts; he allows her to pull him into a dance with her, something wild and free, and he lets himself get caught up in the music, the dumb sixties music Ben had always insisted on playing on their old record player when they were younger. He still recognises the lyrics, somewhere in the back of his mind, touching a memory he didn't think he still had.

Over the shoulder of the girl whose name he doesn't remember or perhaps never heard, he sees Dave, pulling a woman in close to his chest; their eyes catch, over the shoulders of their respective dance partners, and it's like the world stands still for a moment. In this low light, the chatter and laughter of people all around them, they're somehow the only people in this place.

Klaus only has a moment to register how cliché that sounded and chastise his own brain before Dave's coming up to him. There's a slight sheen of sweat clinging to his brow, and his hair is tousled, eyes brighter than Klaus has seen them so far. 

"Come dance with me," Dave says, and Klaus smiles at him, wild and free.

"You wanna show me what moves you got?"

Dave leans in, and, without warning, grabs ahold of his hand. Klaus lets himself be pulled close, up against Dave’s chest; he stumbles, and they’re both laughing, letting themselves be swallowed into the mess of bodies, the mess of people forgetting about what’s waiting for them in the morning for just a moment. 

“You’re a decent dancer, Klaus from the future,” Dave says into his neck as he pulls Klaus up against himself; nobody’s looking, or nobody cares, and they’re so close together that Klaus can feel Dave’s breath on his skin. He doesn’t respond, just lets the music propel him, lets himself be swept up in its energy.

Later, they’re standing against the wall outside, whiskeys in their hands, just the two of them. It’s hot, even at night, hot enough that Dave’s unbuttoned his shirt, and his bare chest glistens with a fine sheen of sweat. Klaus can’t keep his eyes off that glistening, somehow.

Dave’s talking about his childhood, about growing up a farmhand, the youngest of five brothers; the oldest of them, he gathers, has been killed already in this war, and Dave’s not about to follow him. “I’m making it home after this is all over,” he says firmly, with a confidence that Klaus figures probably isn’t entirely justified, but hell if he can’t blame the guy. He’s captivated by the way Dave’s adam’s apple bobs along with his words; the music from inside swells, muffled through the door, and it feels like he might be on another planet, far from the bombs and the jungle and far from his family, those psychos who locked him in a closet and tortured him. It’s just him and Dave at the end of the universe. 

It takes him a while to register that Dave has stopped talking, and is looking at him, eyes inscrutable, a small smile playing on his lips. Klaus licks his own lips, raising an eyebrow. Time has slowed down impossibly.

He’s not sure which of them leans in first, but then they’re kissing all of a sudden, Dave’s hand cupping the back of his head and another hand in the small of his back. He’s got Dave pressed against the wall, and the inside of his mouth tastes like whiskey and tobacco. It’s just the two of them -- everything else has long since fallen away -- and a single, wild thought crosses Klaus’ mind: if this is what 1968 tastes like, then he could stay here indefinitely, as long as he gets to keep this man pressed against him like this.

\--

Of course, six hours later, they’re woken from their beds with a harsh immediacy that has Klaus opening the briefcase again, for the hundredth time, just in case something’s changed. It hasn’t; the damn thing remains stubbornly empty, and the sergeant throws him a quizzical look. Presumably, it hasn’t escaped his notice that Klaus keeps opening this briefcase like it’s his lifeline, nor that it’s entirely empty on the inside. It probably doesn’t make a great impression; Klaus feels like his face must be conveying something of the desperation that he can’t quite contain, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep the emotion off his face.

Dave catches his eye later, when they’re sitting next to each other in the bumpy truck, men jostling into each other on all sides; the corner of his mouth quirks up a little, just enough to make Klaus’ heart jump in his chest. He doesn’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that: like they have a secret to share, and that secret is the most important thing in the world, even if that world seems to be ending around them. 

\--

Despite himself, he falls into a routine. He checks the briefcase every morning, when he’s woken up harshly by the barking orders of his sergeant; it never works, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. They patrol the borders of their territory, hacking their way through the jungle; sometimes nothing happens, but other times, there are gunshots cracking all around them and grenades going off in the distance. He sticks by Dave’s side, but he gets to know the rest of the squad too: there’s Tommy, who’s got two toddlers back home, and Jack, who sings marching songs in a deep baritone that blows Klaus’ mind every time, and Chaz, who Klaus thinks he might also be getting a bit of a gay vibe from, not that he’s about to ask. He doesn’t tell them much about himself, carefully skirting around the topic of his family, his friends back home, anything that would give them too much of an idea of who he is, really. After some time, they no longer bother asking, trying to worm his secrets out of him. But Jack presses a beer into his hand every time they go out drinking with the squadron, and Tommy has an arsenal of bad jokes on hand for every moment of downtime, and it almost, almost, feels like a family.

And then, of course, there’s Dave. 

There’s no way he can be open with his feelings for Dave around here; the sixties aren’t a great time to be gay, that’s one thing he remembers from the hazy history lessons he got from Mom and Pogo way back in the day. When they’re around the squadron, their interactions are limited to loaded glances, the brush of their hands against each other. Easy to hide, easy to overlook, easy to let go unmentioned, even when the others might have noticed something. Klaus doesn’t think that any of the men would actually make trouble for them if they found out; but then again, it’s not something he’s terribly eager on putting to the test, either. They can keep up a semblance of the purely platonic, and if their conversations are a little more hushed when it’s just the two of them, if they sit just a little closer together than strictly necessary when the squadron is gathered around the dinner table -- well, then that’s purely coincidental, he supposes.

But they find moments, anyway, of privacy; they discover spots behind the tents and barracks where it’s quiet, where nobody will bother them. It all feels very middle school circa 2002, or at least, it would if Klaus had had a proper middle school experience; but it’s more than that, he thinks. He tells Dave about his family, about his father, about the mansion he grew up in and the pranks he’d pull on Diego there. All the stories are edited, of course, normalised as much as he can get them so that Dave won’t march him straight over to the mental ward for telling him about his childhood chimpanzee butler. But even so, Dave listens attentively, warmly, and he understands, or tries to at least. It’s an experience so new that Klaus isn’t quite sure how to deal with it at first; maybe this is what a positive relationship experience looks like, and if so, it’s probably sad that it’s so new to him. 

And Dave talks about himself, too; about the farm where he grew up, about his father, who is getting ill and might not be there when he gets back from the war. (It’s always _when_ , never _if_ he’ll make it back; it’s something they can’t think about, or it’ll paralyse them, Klaus thinks, and doesn’t comment on it.) He talks about his dogs back home, his plans of becoming a teacher, his worry that he isn’t smart enough or good enough for this, that he’ll be on the farm forever, just living out his days tending to the cows like his father did before him. It sounds like a pretty good life, if you’d ask Klaus -- out in the field all day, tending to the animals, with a structure and clarity that has long since eluded Klaus’ own life -- but he keeps that thought to himself.

“When I get home,” Dave says, “I’m gonna go back to school. I wanna educate myself.” He sounds so determined, so certain of himself, that Klaus could cry.

“When I get home,” Klaus says, “I’m gonna bring my family back together.” “I’m gonna stay clean,” he says, and he means it, too. He might drink himself through the nights sometimes, but he hasn’t taken any drugs in weeks, months even, and he can just imagine Diego’s face light up when he tells him. He imagines Allison hugging him, telling him she’s proud of him, that he’s done well, for the first time in years. It’s a harmless enough fantasy, he thinks; if he doesn’t think about how he’ll ever make it back home to 2019, if he just focuses on its eventuality, then maybe he’ll get through this war in one piece, too. Everything else can follow.

\--

Bullets are whistling by Klaus' head from all sides; at eight in the morning, it really is too early for this shit. He crouches behind a clump of grass, heart raging inside his chest, as the firing around him continues. Men are shouting, and someone crouches beside him, touches his arm lightly. He looks up; it's Dave, who has a finger pressed against his lips. Klaus nods, and Dave motions with his chin over to where the jungle gets denser, some fifty metres away from them.

It's too far. Klaus knows it, and Dave must know it too; but they hardly have a choice, and Klaus nods, because there's not much else to do. Dave clasps his arm, squeezes it a little harder. There's no time to think about this, no time to reconsider.

Klaus counts down with his fingers. Three. Two. One.

As the two of them jump up and make a break for it, the shouting gets louder; Klaus is dodging, making zig zags across the plain, and he's got his gun out, shooting blindly behind him in the hopes of just scaring them long enough to clear a path for himself. Dave is right in front of him, sprinting as fast as he can, and Klaus' breathing is laboured, intense, as he sprints. It's a strange sensation, this life-or-death urgency that he just hasn't gotten used to since he got here. The idea that the people behind him, people who don't know him personally, would have him dead at a moment's notice; and that he'd gladly shoot those same people if it meant he had a fighting chance of getting out of here.

He stumbles. In just one moment, he's suddenly flailing, legs swiped out from under him, and there's shouting from ahead; Dave whips his head around, stupid, stupidly --

And then there's a blinding pain in his stomach, and he's falling, crashing into the ground at breakneck speed. Dave, up ahead, turns around fully, and his mouth forms an O-shape, his expression changing as if in slow motion. But Klaus can't think about anything but the burning feeling coming from down below his ribcage, and even as Dave speeds back to him -- stupid, stupid, again -- he's dropping away, blackness coming up from below to envelop him even as he feels hands tugging at him.

\--

He wakes up to a quiet he hasn't heard in a while, and for a moment he thinks he might be dead. He wonders, briefly, if he's made it into heaven or hell. He's never been fully religious, but he won't quite discount the possibility of something existing out there, beyond him and his siblings and the world around him.

But then somebody starts coughing, and doesn't stop, and he opens his eyes slowly, with difficulty, to a badly lit hospital ward. There are rows of hospital beds on both sides, grimy cots occupied by the men he’s been fighting alongside for months. 

There's the sound of a chair's legs scraping against the floor beside him, and he slowly turns his head to see Dave, who must have been sitting there, standing up at his side, relief etched into his face like an open book. He has Klaus' hand clasped in his own, and leans over him.

“Hey, buddy,” he says softly, almost tenderly. “You had me real scared back there.”

Klaus cranes his neck to look down at himself, wincing at the movement.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” Dave says quickly, putting a hand against his shoulder to push him back down gently. “Lie still. Doctor’s orders.”

Klaus manages a nod, and clears his throat harshly. “So what happened? Managed to get shot, did I?”

“That you did.” Dave grins. “Rite of passage, you should be grateful.” It doesn’t come out quite as jokingly as he probably intended; there’s a slight wobble in his voice, but Klaus doesn’t comment on it, for both of their sakes.

“Did you --” he swallows. “Were you the one who pulled me out?”

“Had to, didn’t I? I couldn’t just let my favourite guy bleed out there in the jungle like an idiot.” Dave shrugs, like it’s no big deal.

Klaus nods slowly, absently. “Nice of you.” His eyelids are drooping down, despite his best efforts. “I’m gonna…”

“Yeah,” Dave agrees, “get some rest.” He doesn’t let go of Klaus’ hand; instead, he starts rubbing circles into it, steady and constant. Klaus squeezes back once, gently. 

Then he goes to sleep again for a bit.

\--

The bullet entered right next to his stomach and somehow, miraculously, steered clear of every single organ he has. He got lucky. It could’ve been worse; it should have been worse. It’s a couple days until he’s discharged, a week and a half before he’s patrolling again. They can’t have enough bodies out there. 

He’s stiff when moving, sore every morning when he wakes up -- but he got lucky, as Dave keeps repeating to him like a mantra every time he complains, like an asshole. He’s seen worse happen; all things considered, he’s counting his blessings, even though Dave goes quiet when he sees the bruising on Klaus’ stomach, purple and harsh. He got lucky anyway.

The briefcase is still empty, no matter how hard he concentrates on imagining that blue light every time he opens it. Some days, he’s forgetting to even try to make it work. Most days, he does try, fruitlessly. But he doesn’t have the time to worry about it, to think about how he’ll ever make it back home. The war carries on around him, and he’d better carry on with it if he wants to stand a fighting chance.

He and Dave are lying out in the grass below the night sky, pointing out the constellations that they know (Klaus doesn’t get a lot further than the Big Dipper, but Dave can name a surprising amount of them); it’s strangely silent around them, as though the insects have also laid themselves down to rest, and the rest of the world has receded until it’s only them.

Dave points to the sky, tracing a pattern between the stars with his index finger that Klaus can’t follow. “That’s Orion, you see? The archer.”

Klaus nods and gives a little hum, even though Dave isn’t looking at him and he’s not really trying to see the constellation the other man is pointing out. The moon is out, large and full and shining a light down on them that’s almost harsh in its brightness.

They fall silent. Their bodies are close together, though with enough distance that they can jump apart if anyone turns a corner and sees them lying there; but the back of Dave’s hand is pressed against his own, and it sends warmth coursing through Klaus’ veins.

Klaus is about to turn to see if Dave might have fallen asleep when the other man speaks up all of a sudden; there’s a strange edge to his voice as he says, quietly: “Hey, was it true?”

“Was what true?”

“What you said, that first day.” He pauses. “About being from the future.”

Klaus whips his head around to look at him, but Dave in’t looking back at him; his eyes are fixed firmly on the sky above them, and Klaus looks up to follow his gaze. A moment passes. Then:

“Yeah, it was,” he says, and something clenches in his chest at the thought of where he’s from. He doesn’t think about 2019 much anymore, tries to avoid doing so if he can help it; there’s simply too much here to think about, to be terrified by, to add another burden with the thought of his family back there. It’s been months since he got here; home feels more distant than it ever has done, even when he was younger and convinced he’d never see the inside of that mansion again. Now, he’s thinking that that might finally be the truth.

There’s a moment of silence. Crickets chirp all around them, and in the far distance, there are sounds of gunfire, cracking through the silence like a whip.

“How?” Dave asks, quietly.

“I don’t know.” He sighs. “That briefcase I showed up with, remember?” Dave nods next to him, silent. “It had something to do with that. I don’t know the specifics of it.”

“It’s how you were trying to get back,” Dave realises. “It’s not working anymore. That’s what had you so upset, those first few days.”

“Oh, it still has me upset.” Klaus lets out a humourless laugh. “Don’t you doubt that.”

They fall silent again. Klaus isn’t sure what brought this on, but he thinks that Dave, despite everything, might actually believe him; after all, he’s the one who brought it up. He’s not sure if he’d believe it, put in the other man’s position. But Dave is looking up at the sky, eyebrows drawn slightly as if thinking it over.

“When are you from?” he asks, eventually.

“2019.” It feels like a distant dream at this point, the idea of that time in the future, when he was getting comfortably high and blocking out reality without even realising what he had coming for him. “Fifty years from now, in the US.”

“Jesus.” 

“Yeah.”

In the distance, gunshots go off, ringing out above the trees. The screeching sound of a bird call, almost as though in response to the firing. Klaus rubs his eyes with the back of his hand.

Dave doesn’t ask him whether it’s true what Klaus said, way back when they first spoke; about how they’d win this war, eventually. Instead, he says tentatively, “How are you gonna get back home?” 

If Klaus knew that, he wouldn’t be here right now. He sighs, deeply. “I don’t know, does it matter? I’m stuck here for now, in the middle of this shitty goddamn war. Not going anywhere, I can assure you.”

“At least you’ve got me,” Dave quips; it’s a small, almost silly attempt at lightening the conversation, and for a moment Klaus thinks that maybe Dave just isn’t equipped to wrap his head around the concept of time travel yet (for which, frankly, he wouldn’t blame the guy.) But Dave rolls over to face him, and there’s an earnesty in his expression that has Klaus stop short.

“I guess that’s true,” he replies, and the realisation hits him like a train, so simple it should be banal but bearing the weight of the world anyway: he may be here, in the mountain of the crouching beast, in the midst of a war -- but he’s got Dave, and that has to count for something.

\--

Now that Dave knows Klaus’ biggest secret, the rest comes spilling out as well, over the course of days or weeks. Once you’ve accepted time travel, apparently, talking to ghosts isn’t that big of a step up anymore. Only now, Klaus realises how desperate he’s been to talk to someone properly, truly share his past with a real person after months of watching every word he said just in case someone would catch on somehow. And Dave takes it all in, wide-eyed and wondrous at Klaus’ stories of his youth, which was apparently quite the subject of a good fairy tale, based on the reactions he evokes with it.

“An honest-to-God robot mom,” he repeats Klaus’ words, awed; and, “You know your father is a deeply fucked up man and you didn’t deserve any of that shit, right?”; and, “Well, say hi to Ben for me when you see him again.”

“I will,” Klaus says, and he smiles at the thought, wistful but warming at the same time. “He’d like you, I think. He really would.”

\--

“When I get home,” Klaus says, “I’m gonna stay clean for good,” and Dave understands, now, the weight of that statement. He clutches Klaus’ hand tightly and squeezes it.

“You’re gonna make it back home somehow,” he says, with a certainty that Klaus hasn’t be able to muster up in months, no matter how hard he tries.

And somehow, hearing those words no longer fills him with warmth; instead, he thinks of Dave’s hands in his hair, the taste of his lips, and he thinks: maybe this could be home, instead.

\--

But nothing good can last. Klaus should, by all reasonable standards, have learned this lesson years ago, and yet he’s stupid enough to keep falling for it, every time.

Their patrol ends in an ambush. It happens more often than not, but there are too many of them, and Jack goes down first, his guts splattered across the jungle ground as he drops to the ground. Klaus swallows down his instinctive gagging, bites his lip so hard he tastes blood, and stays down as gunshots ring in his ears, close enough that he can almost feel them whizzing by.

When he goes to make a break for it, Dave stays down, and his whole world comes to a stop, despite the scene raging on around them. War pauses for no one, but Klaus will pause when he damn well wants to, and he cups the back of Dave’s head even as his sergeant roars at him to follow, to run while he can. A grenade flies through the air, tossed from their side, and now is the time to run, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Dave, whose breaths are coming in shallow bursts, whose middle is blossoming red before his very eyes.

Dave slowly, agonisingly, lifts a hand to Klaus’ face. “ _Go_ ,” he whispers. But Klaus can’t move. He’s distantly aware of tears streaking his face, of his heart beating inside his chest in a desperate rhythm of _no, no, no_ \-- but Dave’s eyes are glossing over, glassy and unfocused, and then there are hands on him, pulling him up and away, even as he cries out, a single, agonised roar that pierces through the sounds around them.

He leaves Dave there, and all that remains is the man’s blood on his hands, brown and crusty as he sits in the barracks later, staring at his own hands as though they belong to another man. 

He clutches between his rust-coloured fingers a picture he took from Dave’s trunk, of him and his mother, smiling at the camera. Dave has his arm around her, and they’re laughing, eyes bright, and they look so, so happy. 

_When I get home_ , Dave said, _I’m going to kiss my mother on the cheek a thousand times over._

_I’m never gonna be fully home again_ , Klaus thinks, and Dave looks up at him from the photo, carefree and joyful. 

_You’re gonna make it back home somehow_ , Dave told him, steady and certain, and Klaus can almost imagine the taste of his lips, the feeling of Dave’s hands in his hair, if he tries. He can picture Dave’s face, earnest and so, so loving, until the end.

He reaches for the briefcase stashed under his bed.

\--

_He was the love of my life_ , Klaus tells Diego, later, but it’s not true: Dave was more than that. He was a lifeline, a beacon in the darkness. He was the sun peeking through; he was everything to Klaus, his whole world and universe. 

_He was the first person I ever truly loved more than myself_ , he says, and the truth of those words hits him like a bombshell.

Diego smiles.

_Well, hopefully, you’ll get to see him soon._


End file.
